The Mana World Forums

the large style differences between the npcs are usually one of the first critique points most people find when playing TMW for the first time. They look as if they were ripped from 10 different games.

Most of the npcs were style experiments to find a general style for the spritesets. but now where we found our primary spriteset we should maybe start to replace the npcs one after another with sprite edits of the character spriteset.

I don't think they should be direct edits. This would vastly increase repetitivity.
Some NPC's are more muscular, some a bit fatter. Some are tall, some can't reach the doorknob. And ofcourse they don't all face the same direction, not even the same of four. Some might hammer an anvil, others drink a pint.

What I'm saying they can differ quite a lot from the playerset. So yes, they can be based on the playerset. But they shouldn't be one frame picked from the playerset with heavy eyebrows and some clothes drawn over it.
Or well... they could be, but not all of them.

Also we shouldn't forget that on the long run NPCs will be animated.

Kinetic: the one you made "Bracco" is a good example of how npcs should look like in my opinion.

here is my first attempt at creating an npc sprite. a lumberjack for the woodland village.

i started with one frame from the player spriteset. i made him more musculous by stretching the chest area with some additional pixels and changed the head form and facial expression a bit. then i changed the pose of the arms. the clothes are half transparent one colored layers so that the original shading shines through. the hair is from one of the original hairsets (hue, brightness and saturation changed), but i cut some pixels away to give the impression that the character is already losing some hair.

i am not yet statisfied with the head of the axe and the shoes are still missing.

constructive criticism is welcome.

It fits the style of the player characters pretty good, which blends in well.

I really have problems with textures and lightning, I'm more a 8 bit sprite guy I suppose

How did a mermaid end up in the desert?

BadMrBox wrote:How did a mermaid end up in the desert?

Wrong turn at the lights, old map, no gps connection... you know the drill

she sits a little bit odd on that rock

EJlol wrote:she sits a little bit odd on that rock

Yes... indeed. I did it in a few minutes, and then was too lazzy to create a scenery; So I used some standard sprites from the game.
Im also not happy with the tail at all, I just thought it was an funny idea anyway... A Mermaid in a dessert, that suits the SoM Humor I'dd say and makes a good quest

Dont mind the tail, you should make her boobs bigger

BadMrBox wrote:Dont mind the tail, you should make her boobs bigger

True But they'll increase with higher level.

Inspired by this thread I also did an NPC. He's a guy from the savannah area and once its tileset is finished and we have made a map with it he will lead you there.


EDIT: Added the animated version

Nice . Good to see that the NPC's are getting the same style as the players